Hodala Hill

This is one of those posts that could easily turn into an Illiad of writing. Instead, I’ll try and cut it down to a palatable amount of words fitting for a 140 character society.

The first prints received from KCE

#KCE is a little-known celebrity in the cycling industry.  Going back 5+ years random people involved in the trade began receiving envelopes with pieces of bicycle-themed art in them with the only a PO box and KCE in the in return address. These little Random Acts of Art (or Awesome) became a massive ‘thank you’ to many of us who were lucky enough to receive them. It’s widely known that working in the ‘industry’ is one of pure passion…because it is a thankless, time consuming, low paying job that gets ripped apart daily by arm-chair-comment-trolling-I-can-do-better a-holes that have no idea what it actually involved in getting a bike from concept to consumer…and when these envelopes showed up in our mailboxes, it was a moment of pure excitement to see what new rendering we had received.

When KCE approached us about doing a piece, everything quickly went to the Schwinn Exerciser bike we perched atop a pile of wood chips at SSCXWCXPDX. It was an easy choice to represent Hodala and all of our years involved in SSCXWC as it made the cover of ROAD magazines FINAL publication in a grand send-off as it goes to the EU this year.

Hate to see you go….

We (honestly) do not deserve something as rad as this…but we are extremely excited to share it with all of you. Only 50 of these have been handmade…and we’ve already grabbed a few for ourselves…and once they’re gone, they’re gone forever.

Hodala Hill print. Click the link below for the details

Order yours now. 

(if you live in the Seattle area and will be seeing Hodala at the remaining CX races, enter SOUTHPARK for hand delivery at a race…just swing by the Hobago to claim your goods and a beer)

Proof

Proof that Zombie Jesus loves our new shirts so much, he did not smote Cheever and leave him for worm food.

“And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.”  –  Acts 12:23

Thus making you invincible when you wear it.

Drink from his cup…we dare you
Patches? You bet your sweet ass we have patches

And now available in a more portable size to add to your jean jacket.

Proof that a solid thrust hug, an exercise bike and clown makeup will get you noticed by even the most conservative of bike brands.

Any more proof and you’d be able to fire a musket.

Where the ROAD ends

“Don’t worry….we’ll turn off the lights when we leave”

Like all unwanted guests, we’re often the last to leave the party, bar or cross course.  So perhaps it was destiny we found ourselves on the cover of the final issue of ROAD magazine from the shit show that was SSCXWCXPDX.

Tubthumping may have been our theme song for the weekend. Please don’t ask why…
We swear Adam…we did NOT steal your race packet and take it to the gentleman’s club
2016 really needed to fuck off. Is it to early to tell 2017 to do the same?

We enjoyed a particularly indecent relationship with the fine people at ROAD that included trips to Philly, Bikini Baristas, the grail (RIP) and our very own Hot Laps Craig contributing to a number of issues with a column titled Hot Topics with Craig.  The shuttering of their doors is further proof that we just can’t have nice things.

Within a week of the announcement the website was turned off, and we were informed that no print version would be available.  We did manage to download a copy and have it available if you want to give it a gander.

Should you trust something we put on the internet for you to download?  Probably not.  But go ahead and do it anyway.

Download  click it….go on…do it

 

What. The. Fuck. #SSCXWC

The SingleSpeed CycloCross World California Championship is going to be in Los Angeles, NOT Santa Cruz.

I think I’ll skip this one.

See you in Philly.

Actually, if you’re with the Philly ’13 crew, hit me up at hodalacx [at] gmail [dot] com . I’ve got an idea for you.

SSCXWC 2012

Update: Race info coming soon.

 

It seems that we’ve got an increasing number of folks showing up to this site on a daily basis via google searches for SSCXWC 2012 or Single Speed Cyclocross World Championship because of a post I wrote last fall after the Hodala crew had just returned from San Francisco.

Well, as all of you have probably noticed, there’s no new content which isn’t all that strange because no one has any info on SSCXWC 2012. At all. At this point we’re all just assuming that it’ll happen sometime before January 1st in the vicinity of Santa Cruz, CA.

There’s a blog that hasn’t been updated since early April. (Weirdly enough they never approve any comments to the one post that is up.)

There’s a slightly cryptic listing on the Northern California Nevada Cycling Association calendar for December 1 and December 2 with Murphy Mack listed as the promoter and no other information.

And that’s it.

So what are we to do? Here in the NW, ‘cross season starts this upcoming weekend and every promoter has had their calendar online since June. If we’re going to keep SSCXWC going long enough to take it to the east coast – not to mention give the promoters in CA an incredible amount of money – we’ve gotta book flights and hotels/houses, make plans, disappoint family members that we’ll (once again) be going to race and get drunk with our friends instead of making the trek home for the holidays. I mean, what the fuck? This race is a national event that traditionally takes place between the beginning of October and the end of November, right? Aren’t we kind of cutting it close here? Am I being impatient? Seattle announced the date for SSCXWC 2010 in fucking April.

So what do we do? I guess nothing. They’ll announce the date super fucking late and we’ll all spend much more money on flights and hotels that we would’ve if Santa Cruz had their shit together and we’ll go and have a good time and drink beers and celebrate our weird little corner of the cycling world in spite of the fact that the promoters maybe sorta kinda selfishly kept the event for themselves instead of letting Philly take it at the SSCXWC 2011 afterparty when no one from Santa Cruz even showed up to claim the event. But I’m not bitter about it.

Fuck it. We’ll probably see you all at some as yet to be determined date in California. If not… Philly 2013.

 

These are the jokes, folks

Well, fuck it. Let’s keep this going for a few more days.

Sorry for the crappy photo.

 

Update! – Ryan from GoMeansGo is now peddling the Relegate shirts over on his website so that you don’t have to deal with emailing me anymore. Head over to his site and get your order on. Cheers.

$20 gets you an American Apparel shirt and a couple of vinyl stickers. Show all of your friends that you can’t let go of even the smallest of perceived slights. These’ll ship out in a week. Email me at hodalacx (at) gmail (dot) com with your size and I’ll send you the paypal information. If you want any more stickers they’ll be a buck a piece (stickers are weirdly expensive to print, huh?). We’ve got a very limited amount of these.

If you just want stickers, email me. They’re $2 for 2 of ’em.

I can almost promise that this’ll be the last post about this, but it has been great making fun of all of the cool kids over at Rapha. Love you guys.

 

 

Pot Stirring

 

So there’s this:

‘Cross season is winding down in the NW, but we’ve still got a few weeks to spread this sparkling new logo around. We’re hoping to print up some t-shirts before the Bend GP – post a comment if you’d buy one.

Has SF formally relegated the Rapha winners from their 1st place spots at SSCXWC? Does that mean that Brian Myers has stepped up onto the “podium?” Hopefully this Relegate logo will get some attention and make it happen.

Ryan from Go Means Go proposed that a new rule be added to the race for future years: “No pros.  This isn’t a USA Cycling event-  from my understanding they aren’t allowed to race unsanctioned events- but it happened.  I like that there are pros bringing attention to SSCXWC, but at the very least they should be in a different category.” I appreciate that the pros who’ve shown up to this event have, for the most part, had fun with the spirit of the race. A few years ago Ryan Trebon wasn’t able to be at the Saturday qualifier so he won both the A’s and SS races earlier in the day so that he could participate in the ’08 SSCXWC. I don’t have any idea if he would’ve gotten the tattoo, but he didn’t win so it isn’t relevant. I’ve got no problem with pros showing up. I only take issue with the race becoming a marketing endeavor and I don’t care if it is pro teams showing up or the race promoters themselves.

SS ‘cross is going to continue to gain legitimacy in the cycling world. Hopefully folks like our own Craig Etheridge will be traveling next year, competing in (and winning) 1-2 races on a single speed. Others will learn that SS riders have (and always have had) a place on the start line with geared riders, and more and more companies will try to sell us SS specific crap. And some of us will continue to race SS because 2pm start times give us ample opportunity to recover from a hangover. We’ll warm up wearing coveralls to cover the fact that we’re only planning on racing in tighty whiteys. We’ll write race numbers onto bare skin with sharpie markers. Some of us will be in the front of the pack and some of us will be in the back but we’ll all win (Except in the strictest of terms of course – Craig, Brian, and Aaron will mostly do the winning while the rest of us lose horribly.) We’ll keep SS fun and accessible and less-than-serious. In leiu of “Keep SSCXWC Weird” bumper stickers, we’ve got this: Relegate.

Hodala!

 

Breaking News…

Sorry to double up on the short posts today but it has come to my attention that, once again, the winners of the SSCXWC didn’t get their tattoos. Seriously, Rapha-Focus? Why’d you enter if you knew you wouldn’t get the tattoo?

Thanks again to the past winners who have taken this race “seriously.”

 

A New Venue

Where to begin? After a long weekend we’re (mostly) all home, (mostly) all sobered up and I’ll try to piece together the parts of Hodala!’s trip down to SSCXWC2011 that I can remember. Suffice to say that we took the Hodala! show on the road and did what we do in California. So basically, drinks, drinks, and more drinks with a little bike racing and a splash of nudity thrown in for good measure.

Most of us had our doubts about San Francisco taking this on after the spectacle that went down in Seattle last year. They may have cheated their way to victory (check out 4:13 of this video) but we figured we’d take this Sparkle Party down to SF and insure that a good time was had by all – discounting the folks whose race we ruined.

As we all rolled into town we stopped by Zeitgeist to pick up some supplies and leave a size-able portion of our paychecks behind before heading to Raleigh’s party. Our crew figured we’d be far too drunk to figure out a BART schedule to Sheila Moon’s and American Cyclery agreed to throw us a party so that we didn’t have to head over to the East Bay. Impressively, we had our very first person ever get thrown out of a Hodala! party. This was a Haley’s Comet style event – it’ll be another 76 years before it happens again.

American’s keg of Anchor Steam made some of our early qualifier start times a little less than enjoyable, but most of us ended up making it into the main race after the 4 hour slow tour of SF intermittently interrupted by sprints up stairs, across a beach, through a field of wood chips, etc. There was a hell of a lot of running for a bike race qualifier.

photo by Neil Berrett

I was really impressed with how much Raleigh owns the ‘cross scene down there. Every qualifying group had at least one of our Hodala SS Carbon ‘Cross bikes and most had a couple of the Rainier or High Life frames. In my group of 10 there were 3 Hodala frames, a SSCXWC2010 frame, and a High Life. Well played SF; you made us feel right at home.

After the qualifiers we had drinks at our rental house courtesy of some Schooner Exact kegs before we headed to the party at the Sports Basement. All that I can say is that Pixie Bike racing is hard. I was ready to murder myself after trying to ride that tiny bike around for 3 laps until Stevil threw a beer in my face. I’d post photos of that party but they’d be even blurrier than my vision was – someone was laid out on the hood of a car, someone fell asleep at the bar, someone curled up in the back seat of a cab like a sleeping kitten, and one very special someone stopped a corvette in the middle of the street in an attempt to hitch a ride back to our house.

Race day was a little bit of this:

photo by boxdogbikes

and this:

Photo by Jason Perry

and yada yada yada… Brian Myers took 4th overall. Well done, sir. Race reports are everywhere if you want to read more about 3′ tall log barriers, and a surprisingly slippery Golden Gate Park course.

Philly, we really tried to push you over the top when not a single representative from Santa Cruz showed up at the after party to claim the 2012 race, but we were foiled. We’ll take our party slightly further down the coast next year and keep doing our thing.

San Fran, you did good. We didn’t believe in you, but you pulled it off. See you in Santa Cruz.

SF may have been a new venue but we left our mark.